Photos: Studying permafrost in Alaska

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The permafrost tunnel on Thursday Aug. 20, 2015. It was created between 1963-1969 is run and maintained by the United States Army. The tunnel is used by researchers in a variety of fields including permafrost, geocryology, geology, paleontology, paleoclimatology, biology and more.

Retreating glaciers and melting sea ice may grab all the headlines, but the science of permafrost -- the frozen rocks, soil and organic matter underlying most of the circumpolar North -- has emerged as an increasingly important tool in measuring climate change and anticipating its eventual effects.

Last week, an international team of researchers announced a new initiative to publish comprehensive data on the temperature of permafrost and the thickness of the non-frozen layer of ground across the coldest regions in the world. For the first time, the climate models that give us predictions on the future of our planet will be able to incorporate the latest knowledge on permafrost -- a reserve of carbon as much as seven times larger than the tropical forests.

Some of the world's leading permafrost researchers are at work in Alaska, probing the frozen ground with carbon dioxide flux chambers and sophisticated thermometers, artificially warming tundra, or treading through the burnt remains of boreal forests.

And rerhaps the best place in the world to encounter the smell of thawing permafrost and to witness magnificent ice structures created in the ground over thousands of years is a tunnel outside of Fairbanks run by the U.S. Army's Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory.

Read more: Scientists in Alaska race to understand thawing permafrost